Make Death Wait campaign highlights Heart Month
The statistics are just as jarring as the somber message conveyed by the Make Death Wait advertising campaign currently underway for the Heart and Stroke Foundation.
Heart disease and stroke will take one in three Canadians before their time, while they are the No. 1 killer of women, more than all cancers combined.
February is Heart Month, and the foundation is hoping Canadians will get the message that they need to pursue a healthy lifestyle if they want to stave off the Grim Reaper.
Among the risk factors that people can control to help prevent heart disease are high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol, diabetes, being overweight, excessive alcohol consumption, physical inactivity, smoking and stress.
Julie Bard, a 30-year-old mom and loving wife, is well aware that heart disease isn't an older man's disease, as it's commonly misconceived.
When she was just two days old, she had to have closed heart surgery after being born with congenital pulmonary stenosis in which a valve wasn't letting in enough blood to her pulmonary artery.
She also knows the value of the ongoing research into heart disease.
As an adult, she had two heart valves replaced, and then required a dual chamber pacemaker to be inserted.
"...(W)e need to be thinking about our partners, our friends, our children; those we least suspect to have heart disease. And we need to fund research studies to help these people today and tomorrow. New research developments are something we all depend on—myself included."
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